long live the reckless
by dreamsteampunk
Summary: A quiet moment post-canon, in which Natalie is stressed and chats with her older brother, who's been dead since she was born. You know, as you do.


_a/n: a pop punk lyric as my title. how the mighty fall. anyways, the world needs more n2n fic, and i might do gabe as my next narratives of villainy character._

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Natalie's wrists are so thin, she could wrap her hand around one and connect her thumb and pinky finger.

It's an odd detail to pick on, but it's bothering her. It just feels so _breakable_ , like if she accidentally knocked it against her nightstand, it'd split and reveal the bones underneath. It doesn't help that she's so pale. Sometimes, she swears she can squint and see the diseased blood running through her veins, filthy from pills and pot.

She rubbed her eyes. This wasn't going anywhere, and she had a test in two days that she needed to study for.

There was a jar of instant coffee powder on her desk, which she unscrewed hastily and shovelled into the fresh cup of water she'd procured. Swirling it with her spoon, she winced as the clink of metal against glass aggravated her headache further and further. It hadn't gotten to full blown migraine quite yet, but it was resting with a death grip on her frontal lobe, and-

She needed to get out of here.

Abandoning her desk, with the papers and stench of caffeine and bottles of pills swiped from her mother's abandoned medicine cabinet, she hurried down the stairs and out the front door, into the cool night air. Or, well, morning. It was 2 A.M.

The air was frigid and bracing, and Natalie could feel her body growing stiff with the cold. Was this what it felt like to be a cadaver? Her nose stung with the air, but at least the external stinging had taken her mind off the harsh pounding in her head.

Fumbling, she pulled her phone out of her waistband, where it had been shoved in lieu of the pockets no women's clothes ever had.

Her fingers were clumsy with cold, and her knuckles really didn't want to bend, but she still managed to punch in the number she knew would pick up. Except, she hesitated to hit that last button.

How sad was it that there were only three numbers in her phone? Some teenager she turned out to be.

"Is that Henry?" Someone asked, and the voice was too high to be Dad's, so that only left one person.

"Yeah," she muttered, stuffing her phone back into her skirt's waistband. So what if it didn't have pockets? She couldn't find it in her to put on pants that morning. Or, last morning? Time wasn't a concept that worked well with her.

"He's probably asleep, you know," Gabe said, and _god_ he looked real. Is this what her mom had been seeing all this time? No wonder she never had eyes for her.

"Or he's high," Natalie countered, crossing her arms defensively. She was acutely aware of how _fucked up_ it was that she was talking to her dead brother. Who'd come back to haunt them. Not even her mom anymore, he'd moved on to the younger edition. Her.

"Quite a man you've picked out for yourself," he said.

She started. "Oh no, you do _not_ get to comment on my life."

"Hey, hey, just _saying_!"

"Fuck you," she muttered, "you're dead."

"Yeah. And I'm also here."

"I'd rather you weren't," and wasn't _that_ the truth. All her life, she'd rathered her brother had never made an appearance.

"Rude. Is that how you should act towards your only brother?"

"I wouldn't know," she said, "I don't have one."

He frowned as she pushed past him. Her ears were stinging with the cold, and the novelty of being outside had long worn off. Gabe followed her through the doorway.

"You know, I never wanted to be-"

Natalie whirled around. "I don't care! I don't care what you wanted! The thing is, you _did_. You drove my mom _insane_. You took her from me! So fuck you, you don't get to wriggle out of this one."

They stood for a few seconds in silence. She hoped their dad hadn't overheard her yelling. She'd rather not wake him up at ass-o'clock, if she could help it.

"God, this is fucked up," she muttered under her breath, and walked back up the stairs. Gabe didn't follow her.

She had a test to study for. Her crazy family could come second.

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 _a/n: send me prompts at .com_


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